1 Any pirate worth his salt knows that the stars can be used to tell North and find his way. 2 But t'while they were doing all their skyward gazin', the pirates didn'a realize they weren't sailin' solo, as the old relationship status say. 3 Fer far off inna 'nother galaxy, a band o' Aliens set out inna yacht crafted o' metal with solar panel sails ta' explarrgh new planets and star systems. 4 Their mission — to explore the cosmos for signs of pasta.

5 The Aliens not be little gray men, but praying mantises the size of dogs. 6 Though giant bugs, they were still shorter 'an a human, and cuddly as any midget. 7 Being mantises, they did have a voracious appetite, and would feast heartily upon many bowls of Noodles from Beyond the Stars. 8 And their noodles were all sci-fi like and kewl, bein' all shades of blue, green, and black, and they did give off 7-Gray worth o' nutritious ionizin' radiation. 9 And verily this won the favor of the Noodly One as he watched them load their ship with noodles at spaceport.

10 After many months or was it weeks I don't remember, the Aliens' starscruiser did come across a sight most bizarre. 11 It be two stars o' scarlet colorin', orbittin' around one another, a curious web o' yellow stardust surroundin' them. 12 The Aliens did agree that it looked really cool, and proceeded to make macaroni art of it. 13 Just as they sat there on the floor, a transmission did come in. The signal came from within the binary star system itself, and its message be coordinates. 14 Curious and a little bored, the Aliens plugged the numbers into their ship's onboard computer and followed the coordinates off into unknown space.

15 After days of star-sailing, the Aliens happened upon their mystery destination. It be another world, one of water and plants and... lo and behold... PASTA! 16 And so with great joy the Aliens dropped anchor. They were flying in a starcruiser in outer space so the anchor just sorta trailed below the hull and didn't do anything. Then one of them suggested they actually land first. 17 And with a mouthful of pasta, the Aliens' Captain did plunge the starcruisin' yacht down into the atmosphere o' Earth.

Transmission 2

1 The aliens hid on a remote island. There, they built for themselves a home base that would allow them to research, experiment on, and cook all the pasta they would ever need. 2 And soon sleek & shiny building complexes rose out of the trees. 3 To celebrate the start of their operations, they harvested and ground up palm trees and invented the Pasta Colada, served in a coconut bowl. 4 Yay, and with full tummies, the aliens did begin their information gathering on the bizarre Hoomin race.

5 They poured over all means of communication their ship's sensor array could detect, and decided it would be most efficient to study the #1 most widely broadcast transmissions that the Hoomins uploaded. 6 And so the aliens watched porn. And they cheered and made left jabs and right hook motions, for they thought they were watching wrestling. 7 But soon they looked to alternate sources of information, for there was no Pasta on the Playboy Channel.

8 The aliens watched hours and hours of the Cookin' Network, takin' notes and writin' up mathematical formulae to explain them. 9 The aliens collected many new recipes and were happy, but many of them still wondered of the transmission that brought them here. 10 Then one of the little aliens came across The Loose Canon. Apparently this alien could read and understand English. 11 The alien noticed the star cluster they had encountered matched the description of the Flying Spaghetti Monster the text described. 12 After translating it for the rest of the crew, they saw that not only were they not alone in their mission of Noodly Knowledge, but that others had met a giant entity o' spaghetti and meat. 13 And so with parameters to narrow their search, the aliens did head out to find for themselves... a Hoomin envoy.

Transmission 3

1 A humble pasta strainer ship was idly sailing just away from harbor, taking in seawater and cranking out fresh strands o' spaghetti from its modified aftcastle. 2 Ravioli, a cabin boy aboard the ship, be out late one night arbitrarily tyin' knots in random places because that's what sailors did in all the movies and no one had corrected him yet. 3 As he duct-taped a seagull to the mizzenmast, a low humming did catch his ear.

4 Loomin' overhead, a mass o' metal and light did lower from the clouds, its engines lettin' out a reverberatin' hum. 5 Ravioli looked up at the rumbling airborne vessel and promptly required a change of pants. 6 The alien craft halted directly over the wooden boat. 7 A strand of metallic spaghetti slithered down from the craft, and constricted itself around the lad before whisking him off his humble wooden station and into the air, like a chameleon licking up a tasty moth.

8 Ravioli awoke to find himself strapped to a table, a noisy machine over him. A vacuum-sealed door slid open, and insectoid silhouettes entered the room. 9 Approaching their taste subject (haha it's a pun) they started their research. 10 And so the aliens proceeded to probe Ravioli in the name o' Noodly Science, and so inserted a cold metal spoon with alien pasta into his mouth. 11 And as the starbone flavor particles hit his tastebuds, Ravioli's arms and legs ceased their flailin' . . . for he be awestruck by their tastiness!

12 The straps released and withdrew into the table, and Ravioli sat up to find himself not in a hideous laboratory, but a kitchen, far beyond any on Earth. 13 He looked over at the Aliens, who stood waiting with bowls of all sorts of different noodles for his sampling. 14 Ravioli's heart lept and his stomach gurgled, for he knew that he be among fellow Noodle-Lovers.

Transmission 4

1 And so Ravioli's life as a research subject began.The Aliens gave him a tour o' their island base, the native name o' which sounded a bit like chiptune or dubstep and so couldn't be pronounced by Hoomin tongues. 2 Ravioli saw that all of their hi-tech machinery and tools were calibrated to study pasta of all kinds. 3 Skin grafts of linguine sat pinned to plaques, various sauces applied to them. Petri dishes filled with Orzo lined one bookcase. Large test tubes filled with vermicelli, fusilli, and capellini sat on a rack. And also there was clamped to the edge of a table a manual spaghetti crank apparently used to shred paper for amusement. 4 The boy walked the halls of the base, and found it interesting how the Aliens had managed to take the Darks Arts o' Science and use them for Noodly Good. 5 It was Noodly Science, the Aliens explained to him, and like Christian Science, the first word strips the second of all former connotations.

6 The Aliens allowed Ravioli to accompany them on their harvesting missions. 7 They flew their ship over fields of wheat and corn, and used the tractor beam to vacuum up whole stalks straight outta the ground. 8 They Aliens were also morons and so they thought it cool to draw patterns in the crops as they did so. And with this they had a limitless supply of raw materials to make pasta. 9 Occasionally they would also fly down to the ground with their insectoid wings, and give cows a taste of alien pasta as well. 10 One time one o' the Aliens flew into one o' the second floor windows, only to dart back out accompanied by a high-pitched scream as a partially-undressed girl swung at him with a broom. And at more than one time they were shot at by hysterical farmers. 11 Yay. Noodly Science.

12 Over the course of their research, the Aliens did interview Ravioli about the meaning of the Loose Canon. 13 Ravioli did not know too much, for he was not a pirate himself, but a lowly assistant cook. Nonetheless he explained all he did happen to know. 14 He told them of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who cooked all of the Cosmos (the universe, not the blasphemous Carl Sagan television series) into existence from nothin', and whose Noodly Appendage could be found in all of nature. 15 He also told them of Dark Lord Darwin, and how Hoomins had been blinded to the awesomeness of the FSM by his facts and reason. 16 The aliens had already read the Pastafarian Scriptures so why they be askin' these questions be a mystery. 17 Nonetheless, the aliens wanted to observe the Hoomins under Darwin's control, and so sent Ravioli out into the field to provoke them firsthand.

Transmission 5

1 Ravioli had a belly full of delicious capellini with spinach, garlic, and beans, and so was totally energized and psyched for his first attempt at Holy Propaganda. 2 Unfortunately, he had landed in a heathen land. The town he had come into was a liberal university campus inhabited by worshippers of Athe, the goddess of science, reason, and evolution.

3 Athe was portrayed as a brunette female scientist in a white lab coat, a beaker filled with an aqueous green solution in one hand and a platinum-iridium meter bar in the other. 4 Her black-rimmed glasses allowed her to see any wavelength of light at any magnification level. 5 And Her skirt be short to show off her legs, for being the goddess of evolution, she was smokin' hot in order to attract mates. 6 Her followers, those called Atheists, pleased their patron goddess by concluding there simply wasn't any evidence that She existed. 7 For their blind faith (for Atheism is a religion and there is much faith in it), Athe rewarded them with successful laboratory experiments and consistent data collection.

8 Ravioli approached a pack of Atheists playing ultimate frisbee on the Quad, decked out in full piratical regalia. 9 He told them of the many kinds of pasta, of fusilli, and vermicelli, and linguine, and capellini, and radiatori. The lost and foolish Atheists, however, asked him what his point was, and Ravioli didn't know how he was going to convince them. 10 He told them of stoves, and pots, and boiling water, and forks laid upon napkins, but the Atheists once again displayed their blatant hatred for irrational and stupid things, and questioned his motives once more.

11 "Me hearties! We be not adrift in this cosmic ocean! There be others out there who cook and eat pasta too! Forsake yer idol Athe, for she be a false goddess that will lead you to Scholarship!" Ravioli exclaimed.

12 The Atheists countered, "What goddess?! What are you talking about? We don't believe in goddesses either!"

13 Ravioli heard this and knew that their devotion to Athe ran deep. He told them of the Midgets, of the Lumberjacks, and of the Pirates. 14The Atheists explained that they would rather study genetics, statistics, astronomy, and biology, and all the other arcane and blasphemous Darwinian tomes than read of pirates and pasta.

15 Ravioli had ammo for this. "Yer very textbooks unknowin'ly give ye signs o' the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Do you not see that all alphabets, symbols, and written codes are just noodles made out of ink?" Ravioli argued.

16 Still the Atheists ignored his insane babbling, preferring instead their wicked facts and logic. However Ravioli did not lose hope, for a lot the Atheists did admit they loved Ramen. He would continue his delivery of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims.

17 "Aliens!" Ravioli stated aloud, his hands held out in front of himself as though ready to catch a basketball. "Pirates from beyond space and stuff, whose love of pasta led them to build the pyramids aeons ago to record recipes and store their ingredients! Ye too can know the Pirate Aliens! Craft around yer head a tri-corner hat o' aluminum foil, so that their transmissions may fill yer head with thoughts o' pasta and space!"

18 The Aliens had never said or done any of that, but Ravioli had been Touched by His Noodly Appendage, and all things were believable to him now. 19 Or he was just an idiot. 20 The Atheists were not swayed from their belief in the Vixen of Verification and Her Scientific Method, and Ravioli could not convince them that a magical blob of pasta authored the world around them. 21 Watching from above however, hidden among the clouds, the Aliens' sensors did start to detect a most unusual energy signatures surrounding the Atheists. . . .

Transmission 6

1 Back at the island, the Aliens did gobble up ramen by the bowlful and leisurely compiled their data. 2 Ravioli contently slurped up Space Noodles while the soda jerk at the base's bar poured him another Alien Fizzy Drink. 3 This is actually what they called this stuff. I know. 4 The soda jerk told him of their own adventures, both on Earth and on their homeplanet. 5 Then without warning, all the lights on the base did go black.

6 Ravioli found himself lost in total darkness (like foolish Atheists and their rejection of magical pasta beings!) 7 He bumped into one of the soft-serve pasta machines, and horror betook him as he felt healthy agar cubes dispense instead. 8 The Aliens, who could tap their long antennae about and find their way around in the dark sought out the emergency flashlights. 9 Creepy-crawling their way to the base's Radiatori Reactor, they managed to activate the back up generators.

10 Once at the computer terminals, they soon realized the problem was bigger than they could have expected. 11 All of the computer monitors displayed the same image — a ghostly form of an old man with a bushy beard and the body of a chimpanzee. Ravioli walked over to the screen and jumped back.

12 "It's . . . it's . . . DARWIN!!! The Dark Lord has followed us from the college!!! The Monkey Man is here!!!" Ravioli panicked. 13 The Aliens did what they could to get their computers to display their normal glitchy patterns, but the Devil of Descent With Modification had cleaned out the machine's circuits and replaced all of their corrupted files with logical, executable computer code. 14 The Aliens tried to hurry Ravioli to a safer place, but he refused to run when it would be reasonable to do so.

15 "No! It not be a normal virus! It be a spiritual virus! We need to battle Darwin spiritually!" Ravioli explained in a voice louder than was necessary. 16 Really, there wasn't any noise to shout over. The automated alerts were actually rather quiet. 17 The Aliens looked amongst other and nodded. 18 Buzzing (they be mantises and have pairs o' wings to fly with, remember?) their way down the halls to the clothery, or whatever you call a room for storing clothes, oh yeah a closet, they donned all the piratical attire and paraphernalia they had.

19 Ravioli and the Aliens stood in the main lounge, lookin' as a true crew o' swashbucklers, aluminum foil tri-corner hats adornin' their heads. 20 Posters of DNA, the taxonomic hierarchy of life, and ape evolving into man had eerily appeared all over the room. The hooting of monkeys could be heard in the air ducts above. 21 Together, Ravioli and the Aliens drew out their flick-locks o' fettuccine and unsheathed their cutlasses o' capellini.

22 "Now!" Ravioli shouted.

23 The Aliens and Ravioli then did proceed to shoot the hell out of the whole room. They hacked lamps to pieces and filled couch cushions with lead. 24 "For Pasta!!!" Ravioi cried. And they did lay waste to all the furniture in the lounge. 25 One o' the Aliens did give Ravioli a most confused look of WTF, like, why on Earth were they attacking the furniture instead of Darwin? Ravioli smiled and the Alien understood.

26 "Ye cannot fight brain with logic and reason, but with brimming idiocy and total moronity!" Ravioli declared as he sat one of the broken lamps down upon his head.

27 And so they fought against all reasonable mode of behavior. 28 They attacked everything but Darwin, for to do so would have made sense. 29 As innocent things broke, a blanket of stupidness covered the area. 30 The room shook and the simian hooting grew in intensity. 31 Ravioli seized the battle's victory and proceeded to paint a pirate ship on the radiator by the wall. 32 That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. 33 And with that, a powerful quake did tremble throughout the island. The roars of a thousand gorillas in pain sounded out, and all fell silent.

34 The lights came back on, the computers displayed their rightful glitchy symbols, and the soft-serve pasta machines yielded pasta once again. 35 The battle was won. Darwin had been exorcized.

Transmission 7

1 After repairing the base and nursing their injured psyches, the Aliens realized that Darwin was far more dangerous than previously thought. 2 It was no longer safe to rely on procure-on-site acquisitions. 3 The Aliens would have to return to their homeplanet and "borrow" a few things that would better handle any future Darwinian threat. 4 They did not know the way back, but they knew that if the Noodly One had guided them to Earth, It would guide them back home too.

5 After a great deal o' ceremonial BS-ing, the Aliens got aboard their starcruiser. 6 Before leaving, they promoted Ravioli to Head Chef, and gave him the assignment to stay and manage the island base and all its tools. 7 He was to continue their Noodly Research while they were gone, for there was much Noodly Mystery left to be Unsolved.

8 The yacht o' metal soared off into the stratosphere. 9 Left alone on his island, Ravioli put his aptly-renamed Star Kitchen Outpost to work. 10 He fashioned a new dish, a form of pasta that was blob-shaped and hollow, with meat or cheese stuffed inside. It was designed after the Aliens' eyes, which were large and oogly, like the eyes of the FSM Himself. 11 He named this new food the ravioli. Ravioli happily ate his creations, and decided that they were they best combination of meat and pasta since spaghetti & meatballs.

12 Ravioli dutifully performed the silly pirate rituals that kept rational Darwin and his foul temptress Athe at bay. 13 He would go on faux treasure hunts, and sword fight palm trees, and bark orders to a pirate crew that not be there. 14 And yay, the island did become a most holy site, and rumors started to circulate o' an island that stretched noodles into the sky at sunset.

15 Sitting out on the deck of his luxurious new home, a tray full of raviolis at his side, the boy chef relaxed and waited contently for the day he'd hear the reverberating hum of the starcruiser's engine once more.

1Any pirate worth his salt knows that the stars can be used to tell North and find his way. 2But while those pirates were busy sailing seas, slurping spaghetti, and laying wenches, they did not realize they weren't sailin' solo, as the old Facebook relationship status say. 3For far off in another galaxy, a band of aliens were set out in a yacht crafted of metal with solar panel sails to explore new planets and star systems. 4They were the Star Pirates, their mission: to explore the cosmos for signs of Pasta.

5 The aliens weren't the little gray men one often hears of, but praying mantises. 6 Though giant bugs, they were still shorter than a man, and cuddly as any midget. 7 And they did have a voracious appetite, and would feast heartily upon many bowls of Noodles from Beyond the Stars. 8 And their noodles were all sci-fi like and kewl, bein' all shades of blue, green, and black, and they did give off 7-Gray worth o' nutritious ionizin' radiation. 9 And verily this won the favor of the Noodly One as He watched them load their ship with Noodles at spaceport.

10 After many months or was it weeks I don't remember, the aliens' starscruiser did come across a most bizarre sight. 11 It was a binary star system, with two red giants orbiting around one another and a queer entanglement of yellow stardust surrounding them. 12 The aliens did agree that it looked really cool, and proceeded to make macaroni art of it. 13 Just as they sat there on the floor, a transmission did come in. The signal came from within the binary star system itself, and its message was a single set of coordinates. 14 Curious and a little bored, the aliens plugged the numbers into their ship's onboard computer and followed the coordinates off into unknown space.

15 After days of star-sailing, the Aliens happened upon their mystery destination. It was another world, one of water and plants and... lo and behold... PASTA! 16 And so with great joy the aliens dropped anchor. They were flying in a starcruiser in outer space so the anchor just sorta trailed below the hull and didn't actually do anything. Then one of them suggested they actually land first. 17 And with a mouthful of pasta, the aliens' captain did plunge the starcruising boat down into the atmosphere of Earth...

Chapter 2

1The aliens hid on a remote island. There, they built for themselves a home base that would allow them to research, experiment on, and cook all the pasta they would ever need. 2And soon sleek & shiny building complexes rose out of the trees. 3To celebrate the start of their operations, they harvested and ground up palm trees and invented the Pasta Colada, served in a coconut bowl. 4Yay, and with full tummies, the aliens did begin their information gathering on the bizarre Hoomin race.

5They poured over all means of communication their ship's sensor array could detect, and decided it would be most efficient to study the #1 most widely broadcast transmissions that the Hoomins uploaded. 6And so the aliens watched porn. And they cheered and made left jabs and right hook motions, for they thought they were watching wrestling. 7But soon they looked to alternate sources of information, for there was no Pasta on the Playboy Channel.

8The aliens watched hours and hours of the Cookin' Network, takin' notes and writin' up mathematical formulae to explain them. 9The aliens collected many new recipes and were happy, but many of them still wondered of the transmission that brought them here. 10Then one of the little aliens came across The Loose Canon. Apparently this alien could read and understand English. 11The alien noticed the star cluster they had encountered matched the description of the Flying Spaghetti Monster the text described. 12After translating it for the rest of the crew, they saw that not only were they not alone in their mission of Noodly Knowledge, but that others had met a giant entity o' spaghetti and meat. 13And so with parameters to narrow their search, the aliens did head out to find for themselves... a Hoomin envoy.

Chapter 3

1A humble pasta strainer ship was idly sailing just away from harbor, taking in seawater and cranking out fresh strands o' spaghetti from its modified aftcastle. 2Ravioli, a cabin boy aboard the ship, be out late one night arbitrarily tyin' knots in random places because that's what sailors did in all the movies and no one had corrected him yet. 3As he duct-taped a seagull to the mizzenmast, a low humming did catch his ear.

4Loomin' overhead, a mass o' metal and light did lower from the clouds, its engines lettin' out a reverberatin' hum. 5Ravioli looked up at the rumbling airborne vessel and promptly required a change of pants. 6The alien craft halted directly over the wooden boat. 7A strand of metallic spaghetti slithered down from the craft, and constricted itself around the lad before whisking him off his humble wooden station and into the air, like a chameleon licking up a tasty moth.

8Ravioli awoke to find himself strapped to a table, a looming machine over him. A vacuum-sealed door slid open, and insectoid silhouettes entered the room. 9Approaching their Taste Subject (haha it's a pun) they started their research. 10And so the aliens proceeded to probe Ravioli in the name o' Noodly Science, and so inserted a cold metal spoon with alien pasta into his ...mouth. 11And as the starbone flavor particles hit his tastebuds, Ravioli's arms and legs ceased their flailin' . . . for he be awestruck by their tastiness!

12The straps released and withdrew into the table, and Ravioli sat up to find himself not in a hideous laboratory, but a kitchen, far beyond any on Earth. 13He looked over at the aliens, who were wearing silly chef aprons over and hats, waiting with bowls of all sorts of different noodles for his sampling. 14Ravioli's heart lept and his stomach gurgled, for he knew that he be among fellow Noodle-Lovers.

Chapter 4

1And so Ravioli's life among the the Star Pirates began.The Aliens gave him a tour o' their island base, the native name o' which sounded a bit like chiptune or dubstep and so couldn't be pronounced by Hoomin tongues. 2Ravioli saw that all of their hi-tech machinery and tools were calibrated to study pasta of all kinds. 3Skin grafts of linguine sat pinned to plaques, various sauces applied to them. Petri dishes filled with Orzo lined one bookcase. Large test tubes filled with vermicelli, fusilli, and capellini sat on a rack. And also there was clamped to the edge of a table a manual spaghetti crank apparently used to shred paper for amusement. 4The boy walked the halls of the base, and found it interesting how the Aliens had managed to take the Darks Arts o' Science and use them for Noodly Good. 5It was Noodly Science, the Aliens explained to him, and like Christian Science, the first word strips the second of all former connotations.

6The Aliens allowed Ravioli to accompany them on their harvesting missions. 7They flew their ship over fields of wheat and corn, and used the tractor beam to vacuum up whole stalks straight outta the ground. 8They Aliens were also morons and so they thought it cool to draw patterns in the crops as they did so. And with this they had a limitless supply of raw materials to make pasta. 9Occasionally they would also fly down to the ground with their insectoid wings, and give cows a taste of alien pasta as well. 10One time one o' the Aliens flew into one o' the second floor windows, only to dart back out accompanied by a high-pitched scream as a partially-undressed girl swung at him with a broom. And at more than one time they were shot at by hysterical farmers. 11Yay. Noodly Science.

12Over the course of their research, the Aliens did interview Ravioli about the meaning of the Loose Canon. 13Ravioli did not know too much, for he was not a pirate himself, but a lowly assistant cook. Nonetheless he explained all he did happen to know. 14He told them of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who cooked all of the Cosmos (the universe, not the blasphemous Carl Sagan television series) into existence from nothin', and whose Noodly Appendage could be found in all of nature. 15He also told them of Dark Lord Darwin, and how Hoomins had been blinded to the awesomeness of the FSM by his facts and reason. 16The aliens had already read the Pastafarian Scriptures so why they be askin' these questions be a mystery. 17Nonetheless, the aliens wanted to observe the Hoomins under Darwin's control, and so sent Ravioli out into the field to provoke them firsthand.

Chapter 5

1Ravioli had a belly full of delicious capellini with spinach, garlic, and beans, and so was totally energized and psyched for his first attempt at Holy Propaganda. Unfortunately, he had landed in a heathen land. The town he had come into was a liberal university quad inhabited by worshippers of Athe, Goddess of Sscience, Reason, and Evolution.

3 Athe was portrayed as a brunette female scientist in a white lab coat, a beaker filled with an aqueous green solution in one hand and a platinum-iridium meter bar in the other. 4Her black-rimmed glasses allowed her to see any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum and scrutinize both samples and claims at any magnification level. 5And Her skirt be short to show off her legs, for being the goddess of evolution, she was smokin' hot in order to attract mates. 6Her followers, those who called themselves Atheists, pleased their patron goddess by concluding there simply wasn't any evidence that She existed. 7For their rationality, Athe rewarded them with successful laboratory experiments and consistent data collection.

8 Ravioli approached a pack of Atheists playing ultimate frisbee on the field, decked out in full piratical regalia. 9 He told them of the many kinds of pasta, of fusilli, and vermicelli, and linguine, and capellini, and radiatori. The lost and foolish Atheists, however, asked him what his point was, and Ravioli didn't know how he was going to convince them. 10 He told them of stoves, and pots, and boiling water, and forks laid upon napkins, but the Atheists once again displayed their blatant hatred for irrational and stupid things, and questioned his motives once more.

11"Me hearties! We be not adrift in this cosmic ocean! There be others out there who cook and eat pasta too! Forsake yer idol Athe, for she be a false goddess that will lead you to Scholarship!" Ravioli exclaimed.

12The Atheists countered, "What goddess?! What are you talking about?"

13Ravioli heard this and knew that their devotion to Athe ran deep. He told them of the Midgets, of the Ninjas, and of the Pirates. 14The Atheists explained that they would rather study genetics, statistics, astronomy, and biology, and all the other arcane and blasphemous Darwinian tomes than read of pirates and pasta.

15Ravioli had ammo for this. "Yer very textbooks unknowin'ly give ye signs o' the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Do you not see that all alphabets, symbols, and written codes are just noodles made out of ink?" Ravioli argued.

16Still the Atheists ignored his insane babbling, preferring instead their wicked facts and logic. However Ravioli did not lose hope, for a lot the Atheists did admit they loved Ramen. He would continue his delivery of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims.

17 "Aliens!" Ravioli said aloud, his hands held out in front of himself as though holding an invisible basketball. "Pirates from beyond space and stuff, whose love of pasta led them to build the pyramids aeons ago to record recipes and store their ingredients! Ye too can know the Pirate Aliens! Craft around yer head a tri-corner hat o' aluminum foil, so that their transmissions may fill yer head with thoughts o' pasta and space!"

18The Aliens had never said or done any of that, but Ravioli had been introduced to rum earlier, and all things were believable to him now. 19Or he was just an idiot. 20The Atheists were not swayed from their belief in the Vixen of Verification and Her wicked Scientific Method, and Ravioli could not convince them that a magical blob of pasta authored the world around them. 21Watching from above however, hidden among the clouds, the Aliens' sensors did start to detect a most unusual energy signatures surrounding the Atheists. . . .

Chapter 6

1Back at the island, the aliens did gobble up ramen by the bowlful and leisurely compiled their data. 2Ravioli contently slurped up Space Noodles while the soda jerk at the base's bar poured him another Alien Fizzy Drink. 3This is actually what they called this stuff. I know. 4The soda jerk told him of their own adventures, both on Earth and on their homeplanet, of how they fired from the Aerospace Orient, how they snuck back into the facility, got really hammered on rocket fuel, stole of the exosolar colonizing space cruisers sitting at the docking station, and made off into the cold reaches of uncharted space. 5Then without warning, all the lights on the base did go black.

6 Ravioli found himself lost in total darkness (like foolish Atheists and their rejection of magical pasta beings.) 7He bumped into one of the soft-serve pasta machines, and horror betook him as he found healthy soy-based frozen yogurt dispensed instead. 8The Aliens, who could tap their long antennae around and find their way about in the dark sought out the emergency flashlights. 9Creepy-crawling their way to the base's Radiatori Reactor, they managed to activate the back up generators that did look like treasure chests.

10Once at the computer terminals, they soon realized the problem was bigger than they could have expected. 11All of the computer monitors displayed the same image — a ghostly form of an old man with a bushy beard and the body of a chimpanzee. Ravioli walked over to the screen and his went wide in terror.

12"It . . . it be . . . IT BE DARWIN!!! The Dark Lord has followed us from the college!!! The Monkey Man is here!!!" Ravioli announced. 13The aliens were bored now, and did wish for Ravioli to be quiet for once. 14 Walking disinterestedly to their computers, they tried to display their proper pasta recipes, but the Devil of Descent With Modification had cleaned out the machine's circuits and replaced all of their cooking instructions and food website links with illustrations of fossil excavation sites and genetic similarities between monophyletic groups. 15The aliens thought this was actually pretty cool, but Ravioli proceeded to spill grog all over the terminals, shorting them out. 16 That kinda pissed the aliens off. They had downloaded many wrestling videos onto those machines. 17Then the base shook. 18 One of the aliens pointed with its barbed claw to the ceiling, and the other nodded and scampered off, one of them taking Ravioli in its claws. 19 The aliens opening their bug-like wings and took off, flyin' up the winding hallways and directly through the elevator shafts like the Flyin' Dutchman himself until they reached the ground floor. 20Cautiously making their way on foot, they came upon the base's lobby.

21The vacuum-sealed door be hanging wide open, an empty beaker driping hydrochloric acid lyin' discarded by the melted hinges. 22Suddenly Ravioli heard something. 23A murmur came from out of sight. An airy laugh. 24Backing up against the furniture, Ravioli discovered the bizarre sight of a lacy black bra hanging off a chair armrest, a pair o' stockings lying draped over a college biochemistry textbook on the coffee table, and lipstick enclosed by a pair of reading glasses.

25"Wait, no... This not be Darwin... 26This be the sexy apparel of the Maiden of Matin', the Deva of DNA,... Athe!!!" Ravioli explained in a voice louder than was necessary. 27Really, there wasn't any noise to shout over. The automated alerts were actually rather quiet.

28"An astute observation," a sultry, disembodied voice spoke. Ravioli and the aliens turned to see nothing. 29The echoing clack of high heels sounded throughout the room as, out of thin air, a female figure materialized out of a glowing green cloud of Greek letters and chemical bonding diagrams. 30Athe stood proud in full Scientifical Regalia, a white labcoat hugging her body of awesomenss, a clipboard in one hand, an Erlenmeyer flask filled with phosphorescent blue liquid in the other, a pencil tucked behind her ear, dark brunette hair tied back in a safe bun as per laboratory fire safety protocal.

32"Why I am just a humble undergrad student on a field trip to do research," Athe innocently stated, "And you Ravioli, are a one of a kind specimen." 33The goddess of science then lept into the air. "I absolutely must take a sample!" she exclaimed. 34Ravioli tried to dodge her flying side kick, but the point of her high heel tore the side of Ravioli's piratin' outfit.

35"Why do ye be wearin' heels in a lab? That be a tripping hazard! 36Why do wenches always be trippin'???" Ravioli called out to the demoness.

37Athe laughed breathily at the inquiry. "I am as hot as I am bright," Athe explained, pushing her sharp-looking semi-rimless glasses back up, "and controlled laboratory conditions require a little provocation," she finished. 38At that, she tossed her flask at Ravioli. 39Ravioli held his arms out to block it, but something else happened...

40In his hands a glowing red ball did form. About the size of a tennis ball, its surface was bumpy and uneven. It be... a meatball! 41The meatball launched out at the flask, and the two exploded in a flash of energy!

42"Euryka! This confirms my initial hypothesis! You are the only specimen of Hominis Piratus I've observed that possesses an active copy of the Pastakinesis gene!"

43Ravioli looked at his hands with uncertainty. It had just happened. But there was no time to ponder developing Pastakinetic powers. 44Athe was now charging at him, her clipboard shapeshifting into a glass microscope slide. 45Ravioli again pointed his hands at the coed. 46Out of thin air, strands of spaghetti did materialize, and with a writhing mass of noodly appendages Ravioli knocked the sample slide out of her hands.

47Turning on a dime with the points of her high heels, Athe whipped out smaller metallic tools. 48Pinning Ravioli to the floor by his clothes using tweezers, Athe climbed over him.

49"As the goddess of evolution, it is my agenda that beneficial traits being passed on," the Vixen of Verification explained, pulling her scrunchy out and letting her hair fall down, "What do you say? My brains... your noodles... We could make the most evolutionarily advanced young ever."

50"Rrr! Aliens! She be distracted! Aim an' shoot!" Ravioli called. The aliens gathered 'round with video cameras and made fist pumping motions, thinking they would catch live wrestlin' in action. 51Surrounded by idiots, Ravioli closed his eyes and centered himself. He beheld not Athe's rockin cleavage and instead turned his thoughts inward, meditating on the Holy Meal. 52He envisioned a pot full of water, sitting on a stove, a large blue flame dancing beneath. Around him, the air began to wave and blur.

53"What... what are you doing?" Athe inquired. The air surround the two now bubbled and boiled, and the floor space beneath them took on a fluid blue color.

54Ravioli thrust his hands upon Athe's unguarded chest and proclaimed "By the FSM, know that inside... ye be a Noodle!" Arcs of electricity flashed out from the two! 55Athe jerked back, and fell forward ontop of Ravioli, all of her limbs gone slack. Reduced to Noodles. 56Tightening his grip on her... well, assets..., Ravioli threw the Harlot of Hard Evidence off clear across the room with a victorious "ARRGH!!!"

57The pirate stumbled to his feet. The aliens were nodding their heads at the cool footage they got. 58Across the room, Athe sat slouched against the wall. A smirk rose on her face. Ravioli stuttered in disbelief as Athe stood back up as though nothing happened.

59"Sorry young pirate, but my skeleton is composed of the same platinum-iridium alloy as the International Prototype Metre. You cannot noodle me!" Athe announced in triumph. 60The goddess of science raised her hand, revealing a pair of tweezers. When Ravioli threw Athe off of him, one of her tweezers plucked a few hairs off of the pirate lad's head.

61"I play chess while you play Munckin," she teased, fixing her brassiere. Athe slid the hair fibers into a test tube. "This will suffice for now," she concluded. And with that, Athe lept up into the air and disappeared into a mist of chemical formulae. 62The lights came back on, the computers displayed the holy carbohydrates and the soft-serve pasta machines yielded pasta once again. Ravioli fell down on his butt and breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.

Chapter 7

1After repairing the base and nursing their injured psyches, the Aliens realized that mere Athe was far more dangerous than previously thought. 2Though Athe the goddess of science and evolution had left them alone, she had obtained what she wanted: a sample of Ravioli's noodly DNA was in her genetics lab now. 3It was no longer safe to rely on procure-on-site acquisitions. 4The Aliens would have to return to their homeplanet and borrow a few things from the Aerospace Orient that would better handle any future Darwinian threat. 5They did not know the way back, but they knew that if the Noodly One had guided them to Earth, It would guide them back home too. 6After a great deal o' ceremonial BSing, the Aliens got aboard their starcruiser. 7Before leaving, they promoted Ravioli to Head Chef, and gave him the assignment to stay and manage the island base and all its tools. 8He was to continue their Noodly Research while they were gone, for there was much Noodly Mystery left to be Unsolved.

9And so the yacht o' metal soared off into the stratosphere. 10Left alone on his island, Ravioli put his aptly-renamed Star Kitchen Outpost to work. 11He fashioned a new dish, a form of pasta that was blob-shaped and soft, bein' with meat stuffed inside. Ravioli got the idea from when he did cop a feel on Athe. 12He named these new mounds of pasta meat, "raviolis." Ravioli happily ate his creations, and decided that they were they best combination of meat and pasta since spaghetti & meatballs. 13Ravioli dutifully performed the piratical rituals that kept rational Darwin and his foul temptress Athe at bay. 14He would go on faux treasure hunts, and sword fight palm trees, and bark orders to a pirate crew that not be there. 15And yay, the island did become a most holy site, and rumors started to circulate o' an island that stretched noodles into the sky at sunset. 16Sitting out on the deck of his luxurious new home, a tray full of raviolis at his side, the boy chef relaxed and contently waited for the day he'd hear the reverberating hum of the starcruiser's engine once more.

1Any pirate worth his salt knows that the stars can be used to tell North and find his way. 2But while those pirates were busy sailing seas, slurping spaghetti, and laying wenches, they did not realize they weren't sailin' solo, as the old Facebook relationship status say. 3For far off in another galaxy, a band of aliens were set out in a yacht crafted of metal with solar panel sails to explore new planets and star systems. 4They were the Star Pirates, their mission: to explore the cosmos for signs of Pasta.

5 The aliens weren't the little gray men one often hears of, but praying mantises. 6 Though giant bugs, they were still shorter than a man, and cuddly as any midget. 7 And they did have a voracious appetite, and would feast heartily upon many bowls of Noodles from Beyond the Stars. 8 And their noodles were all sci-fi like and kewl, bein' all shades of blue, green, and black, and they did give off 7-Gray worth o' nutritious ionizin' radiation. 9 And verily this won the favor of the Noodly One as He watched them load their ship with Noodles at spaceport.

10 After many months or was it weeks I don't remember, the aliens' starscruiser did come across a most bizarre sight. 11 It was a binary star system, with two red giants orbiting around one another and a queer entanglement of yellow stardust surrounding them. 12 The aliens did agree that it looked really cool, and proceeded to make macaroni art of it. 13 Just as they sat there on the floor, a transmission did come in. The signal came from within the binary star system itself, and its message was a single set of coordinates. 14 Curious and a little bored, the aliens plugged the numbers into their ship's onboard computer and followed the coordinates off into unknown space.

15 After days of star-sailing, the Aliens happened upon their mystery destination. It was another world, one of water and plants and... lo and behold... PASTA! 16 And so with great joy the aliens dropped anchor. They were flying in a starcruiser in outer space so the anchor just sorta trailed below the hull and didn't actually do anything. Then one of them suggested they actually land first. 17 And with a mouthful of pasta, the aliens' captain did plunge the starcruising boat down into the atmosphere of Earth...

Chapter 2

1The aliens hid on a remote island. There, they built for themselves a home base that would allow them to research, experiment on, and cook all the pasta they would ever need. 2And soon sleek & shiny building complexes rose out of the trees. 3To celebrate the start of their operations, they harvested and ground up palm trees and invented the Pasta Colada, served in a coconut bowl. 4Yay, and with full tummies, the aliens did begin their information gathering on the bizarre Hoomin race.

5They poured over all means of communication their ship's sensor array could detect, and decided it would be most efficient to study the #1 most widely broadcast transmissions that the Hoomins uploaded. 6And so the aliens watched porn. And they cheered and made left jabs and right hook motions, for they thought they were watching wrestling. 7But soon they looked to alternate sources of information, for there was no Pasta on the Playboy Channel.

8The aliens watched hours and hours of the Cookin' Network, takin' notes and writin' up mathematical formulae to explain them. 9The aliens collected many new recipes and were happy, but many of them still wondered of the transmission that brought them here. 10Then one of the little aliens came across The Loose Canon. Apparently this alien could read and understand English. 11The alien noticed the star cluster they had encountered matched the description of the Flying Spaghetti Monster the text described. 12After translating it for the rest of the crew, they saw that not only were they not alone in their mission of Noodly Knowledge, but that others had met a giant entity o' spaghetti and meat. 13And so with parameters to narrow their search, the aliens did head out to find for themselves... a Hoomin envoy.

Chapter 3

1A humble pasta strainer ship was idly sailing just away from harbor, taking in seawater and cranking out fresh strands o' spaghetti from its modified aftcastle. 2Ravioli, a cabin boy aboard the ship, be out late one night arbitrarily tyin' knots in random places because that's what sailors did in all the movies and no one had corrected him yet. 3As he duct-taped a seagull to the mizzenmast, a low humming did catch his ear.

4Loomin' overhead, a mass o' metal and light did lower from the clouds, its engines lettin' out a reverberatin' hum. 5Ravioli looked up at the rumbling airborne vessel and promptly required a change of pants. 6The alien craft halted directly over the wooden boat. 7A strand of metallic spaghetti slithered down from the craft, and constricted itself around the lad before whisking him off his humble wooden station and into the air, like a chameleon licking up a tasty moth.

8Ravioli awoke to find himself strapped to a table, a looming machine over him. A vacuum-sealed door slid open, and insectoid silhouettes entered the room. 9Approaching their Taste Subject (haha it's a pun) they started their research. 10And so the aliens proceeded to probe Ravioli in the name o' Noodly Science, and so inserted a cold metal spoon with alien pasta into his ...mouth. 11And as the starbone flavor particles hit his tastebuds, Ravioli's arms and legs ceased their flailin' . . . for he be awestruck by their tastiness!

12The straps released and withdrew into the table, and Ravioli sat up to find himself not in a hideous laboratory, but a kitchen, far beyond any on Earth. 13He looked over at the aliens, who were wearing silly chef aprons over and hats, waiting with bowls of all sorts of different noodles for his sampling. 14Ravioli's heart lept and his stomach gurgled, for he knew that he be among fellow Noodle-Lovers.

Chapter 4

1And so Ravioli's life among the the Star Pirates began.The Aliens gave him a tour o' their island base, the native name o' which sounded a bit like chiptune or dubstep and so couldn't be pronounced by Hoomin tongues. 2Ravioli saw that all of their hi-tech machinery and tools were calibrated to study pasta of all kinds. 3Skin grafts of linguine sat pinned to plaques, various sauces applied to them. Petri dishes filled with Orzo lined one bookcase. Large test tubes filled with vermicelli, fusilli, and capellini sat on a rack. And also there was clamped to the edge of a table a manual spaghetti crank apparently used to shred paper for amusement. 4The boy walked the halls of the base, and found it interesting how the Aliens had managed to take the Darks Arts o' Science and use them for Noodly Good. 5It was Noodly Science, the Aliens explained to him, and like Christian Science, the first word strips the second of all former connotations.

6The Aliens allowed Ravioli to accompany them on their harvesting missions. 7They flew their ship over fields of wheat and corn, and used the tractor beam to vacuum up whole stalks straight outta the ground. 8They Aliens were also morons and so they thought it cool to draw patterns in the crops as they did so. And with this they had a limitless supply of raw materials to make pasta. 9Occasionally they would also fly down to the ground with their insectoid wings, and give cows a taste of alien pasta as well. 10One time one o' the Aliens flew into one o' the second floor windows, only to dart back out accompanied by a high-pitched scream as a partially-undressed girl swung at him with a broom. And at more than one time they were shot at by hysterical farmers. 11Yay. Noodly Science.

12Over the course of their research, the Aliens did interview Ravioli about the meaning of the Loose Canon. 13Ravioli did not know too much, for he was not a pirate himself, but a lowly assistant cook. Nonetheless he explained all he did happen to know. 14He told them of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who cooked all of the Cosmos (the universe, not the blasphemous Carl Sagan television series) into existence from nothin', and whose Noodly Appendage could be found in all of nature. 15He also told them of Dark Lord Darwin, and how Hoomins had been blinded to the awesomeness of the FSM by his facts and reason. 16The aliens had already read the Pastafarian Scriptures so why they be askin' these questions be a mystery. 17Nonetheless, the aliens wanted to observe the Hoomins under Darwin's control, and so sent Ravioli out into the field to provoke them firsthand.

Chapter 5

1Ravioli had a belly full of delicious capellini with spinach, garlic, and beans, and so was totally energized and psyched for his first attempt at Holy Propaganda. Unfortunately, he had landed in a heathen land. The town he had come into was a liberal university quad inhabited by worshippers of Athe, Goddess of Sscience, Reason, and Evolution.

3 Athe was portrayed as a brunette female scientist in a white lab coat, a beaker filled with an aqueous green solution in one hand and a platinum-iridium meter bar in the other. 4Her black-rimmed glasses allowed her to see any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum and scrutinize both samples and claims at any magnification level. 5And Her skirt be short to show off her legs, for being the goddess of evolution, she was smokin' hot in order to attract mates. 6Her followers, those who called themselves Atheists, pleased their patron goddess by concluding there simply wasn't any evidence that She existed. 7For their rationality, Athe rewarded them with successful laboratory experiments and consistent data collection.

8 Ravioli approached a pack of Atheists playing ultimate frisbee on the field, decked out in full piratical regalia. 9 He told them of the many kinds of pasta, of fusilli, and vermicelli, and linguine, and capellini, and radiatori. The lost and foolish Atheists, however, asked him what his point was, and Ravioli didn't know how he was going to convince them. 10 He told them of stoves, and pots, and boiling water, and forks laid upon napkins, but the Atheists once again displayed their blatant hatred for irrational and stupid things, and questioned his motives once more.

11"Me hearties! We be not adrift in this cosmic ocean! There be others out there who cook and eat pasta too! Forsake yer idol Athe, for she be a false goddess that will lead you to Scholarship!" Ravioli exclaimed.

12The Atheists countered, "What goddess?! What are you talking about?"

13Ravioli heard this and knew that their devotion to Athe ran deep. He told them of the Midgets, of the Ninjas, and of the Pirates. 14The Atheists explained that they would rather study genetics, statistics, astronomy, and biology, and all the other arcane and blasphemous Darwinian tomes than read of pirates and pasta.

15Ravioli had ammo for this. "Yer very textbooks unknowin'ly give ye signs o' the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Do you not see that all alphabets, symbols, and written codes are just noodles made out of ink?" Ravioli argued.

16Still the Atheists ignored his insane babbling, preferring instead their wicked facts and logic. However Ravioli did not lose hope, for a lot the Atheists did admit they loved Ramen. He would continue his delivery of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims.

17 "Aliens!" Ravioli said aloud, his hands held out in front of himself as though holding an invisible basketball. "Pirates from beyond space and stuff, whose love of pasta led them to build the pyramids aeons ago to record recipes and store their ingredients! Ye too can know the Pirate Aliens! Craft around yer head a tri-corner hat o' aluminum foil, so that their transmissions may fill yer head with thoughts o' pasta and space!"

18The Aliens had never said or done any of that, but Ravioli had been introduced to rum earlier, and all things were believable to him now. 19Or he was just an idiot. 20The Atheists were not swayed from their belief in the Vixen of Verification and Her wicked Scientific Method, and Ravioli could not convince them that a magical blob of pasta authored the world around them. 21Watching from above however, hidden among the clouds, the Aliens' sensors did start to detect a most unusual energy signatures surrounding the Atheists. . . .

Chapter 6

1Back at the island, the aliens did gobble up ramen by the bowlful and leisurely compiled their data. 2Ravioli contently slurped up Space Noodles while the soda jerk at the base's bar poured him another Alien Fizzy Drink. 3This is actually what they called this stuff. I know. 4The soda jerk told him of their own adventures, both on Earth and on their homeplanet, of how they fired from the Aerospace Orient, how they snuck back into the facility, got really hammered on rocket fuel, stole of the exosolar colonizing space cruisers sitting at the docking station, and made off into the cold reaches of uncharted space. 5Then without warning, all the lights on the base did go black.

6 Ravioli found himself lost in total darkness (like foolish Atheists and their rejection of magical pasta beings.) 7He bumped into one of the soft-serve pasta machines, and horror betook him as he found healthy soy-based frozen yogurt dispensed instead. 8The Aliens, who could tap their long antennae around and find their way about in the dark sought out the emergency flashlights. 9Creepy-crawling their way to the base's Radiatori Reactor, they managed to activate the back up generators that did look like treasure chests.

10Once at the computer terminals, they soon realized the problem was bigger than they could have expected. 11All of the computer monitors displayed the same image — a ghostly form of an old man with a bushy beard and the body of a chimpanzee. Ravioli walked over to the screen and his went wide in terror.

12"It . . . it be . . . IT BE DARWIN!!! The Dark Lord has followed us from the college!!! The Monkey Man is here!!!" Ravioli announced. 13The aliens were bored now, and did wish for Ravioli to be quiet for once. 14 Walking disinterestedly to their computers, they tried to display their proper pasta recipes, but the Devil of Descent With Modification had cleaned out the machine's circuits and replaced all of their cooking instructions and food website links with illustrations of fossil excavation sites and genetic similarities between monophyletic groups. 15The aliens thought this was actually pretty cool, but Ravioli proceeded to spill grog all over the terminals, shorting them out. 16 That kinda pissed the aliens off. They had downloaded many wrestling videos onto those machines. 17Then the base shook. 18 One of the aliens pointed with its barbed claw to the ceiling, and the other nodded and scampered off, one of them taking Ravioli in its claws. 19 The aliens opening their bug-like wings and took off, flyin' up the winding hallways and directly through the elevator shafts like the Flyin' Dutchman himself until they reached the ground floor. 20Cautiously making their way on foot, they came upon the base's lobby.

21The vacuum-sealed door be hanging wide open, an empty beaker driping hydrochloric acid lyin' discarded by the melted hinges. 22Suddenly Ravioli heard something. 23A murmur came from out of sight. An airy laugh. 24Backing up against the furniture, Ravioli discovered the bizarre sight of a lacy black bra hanging off a chair armrest, a pair o' stockings lying draped over a college biochemistry textbook on the coffee table, and lipstick enclosed by a pair of reading glasses.

25"Wait, no... This not be Darwin... 26This be the sexy apparel of the Maiden of Matin', the Deva of DNA,... Athe!!!" Ravioli explained in a voice louder than was necessary. 27Really, there wasn't any noise to shout over. The automated alerts were actually rather quiet.

28"An astute observation," a sultry, disembodied voice spoke. Ravioli and the aliens turned to see nothing. 29The echoing clack of high heels sounded throughout the room as, out of thin air, a female figure materialized out of a glowing green cloud of Greek letters and chemical bonding diagrams. 30Athe stood proud in full Scientifical Regalia, a white labcoat hugging her body of awesomenss, a clipboard in one hand, an Erlenmeyer flask filled with phosphorescent blue liquid in the other, a pencil tucked behind her ear, dark brunette hair tied back in a safe bun as per laboratory fire safety protocal.

32"Why I am just a humble undergrad student on a field trip to do research," Athe innocently stated, "And you Ravioli, are a one of a kind specimen." 33The goddess of science then lept into the air. "I absolutely must take a sample!" she exclaimed. 34Ravioli tried to dodge her flying side kick, but the point of her high heel tore the side of Ravioli's piratin' outfit.

35"Why do ye be wearin' heels in a lab? That be a tripping hazard! 36Why do wenches always be trippin'???" Ravioli called out to the demoness.

37Athe laughed breathily at the inquiry. "I am as hot as I am bright," Athe explained, pushing her sharp-looking semi-rimless glasses back up, "and controlled laboratory conditions require a little provocation," she finished. 38At that, she tossed her flask at Ravioli. 39Ravioli held his arms out to block it, but something else happened...

40In his hands a glowing red ball did form. About the size of a tennis ball, its surface was bumpy and uneven. It be... a meatball! 41The meatball launched out at the flask, and the two exploded in a flash of energy!

42"Euryka! This confirms my initial hypothesis! You are the only specimen of Hominis Piratus I've observed that possesses an active copy of the Pastakinesis gene!"

43Ravioli looked at his hands with uncertainty. It had just happened. But there was no time to ponder developing Pastakinetic powers. 44Athe was now charging at him, her clipboard shapeshifting into a glass microscope slide. 45Ravioli again pointed his hands at the coed. 46Out of thin air, strands of spaghetti did materialize, and with a writhing mass of noodly appendages Ravioli knocked the sample slide out of her hands.

47Turning on a dime with the points of her high heels, Athe whipped out smaller metallic tools. 48Pinning Ravioli to the floor by his clothes using tweezers, Athe climbed over him.

49"As the goddess of evolution, it is my agenda that beneficial traits being passed on," the Vixen of Verification explained, pulling her scrunchy out and letting her hair fall down, "What do you say? My brains... your noodles... We could make the most evolutionarily advanced young ever."

50"Rrr! Aliens! She be distracted! Aim an' shoot!" Ravioli called. The aliens gathered 'round with video cameras and made fist pumping motions, thinking they would catch live wrestlin' in action. 51Surrounded by idiots, Ravioli closed his eyes and centered himself. He beheld not Athe's rockin cleavage and instead turned his thoughts inward, meditating on the Holy Meal. 52He envisioned a pot full of water, sitting on a stove, a large blue flame dancing beneath. Around him, the air began to wave and blur.

53"What... what are you doing?" Athe inquired. The air surround the two now bubbled and boiled, and the floor space beneath them took on a fluid blue color.

54Ravioli thrust his hands upon Athe's unguarded chest and proclaimed "By the FSM, know that inside... ye be a Noodle!" Arcs of electricity flashed out from the two! 55Athe jerked back, and fell forward ontop of Ravioli, all of her limbs gone slack. Reduced to Noodles. 56Tightening his grip on her... well, assets..., Ravioli threw the Harlot of Hard Evidence off clear across the room with a victorious "ARRGH!!!"

57The pirate stumbled to his feet. The aliens were nodding their heads at the cool footage they got. 58Across the room, Athe sat slouched against the wall. A smirk rose on her face. Ravioli stuttered in disbelief as Athe stood back up as though nothing happened.

59"Sorry young pirate, but my skeleton is composed of the same platinum-iridium alloy as the International Prototype Metre. You cannot noodle me!" Athe announced in triumph. 60The goddess of science raised her hand, revealing a pair of tweezers. When Ravioli threw Athe off of him, one of her tweezers plucked a few hairs off of the pirate lad's head.

61"I play chess while you play Munckin," she teased, fixing her brassiere. Athe slid the hair fibers into a test tube. "This will suffice for now," she concluded. And with that, Athe lept up into the air and disappeared into a mist of chemical formulae. 62The lights came back on, the computers displayed the holy carbohydrates and the soft-serve pasta machines yielded pasta once again. Ravioli fell down on his butt and breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.

Chapter 7

1After repairing the base and nursing their injured psyches, the Aliens realized that mere Athe was far more dangerous than previously thought. 2Though Athe the goddess of science and evolution had left them alone, she had obtained what she wanted: a sample of Ravioli's noodly DNA was in her genetics lab now. 3It was no longer safe to rely on procure-on-site acquisitions. 4The Aliens would have to return to their homeplanet and borrow a few things from the Aerospace Orient that would better handle any future Darwinian threat. 5They did not know the way back, but they knew that if the Noodly One had guided them to Earth, It would guide them back home too. 6After a great deal o' ceremonial BSing, the Aliens got aboard their starcruiser. 7Before leaving, they promoted Ravioli to Head Chef, and gave him the assignment to stay and manage the island base and all its tools. 8He was to continue their Noodly Research while they were gone, for there was much Noodly Mystery left to be Unsolved.

9And so the yacht o' metal soared off into the stratosphere. 10Left alone on his island, Ravioli put his aptly-renamed Star Kitchen Outpost to work. 11He fashioned a new dish, a form of pasta that was blob-shaped and soft, bein' with meat stuffed inside. Ravioli got the idea from when he did cop a feel on Athe. 12He named these new mounds of pasta meat, "raviolis," for he had mastered an art of the lazy pirate: the CopyPasta. Ravioli happily ate his creations, and decided that they were they best combination of meat and pasta since spaghetti & meatballs.

13Ravioli dutifully performed the piratical rituals that kept rational Darwin and his foul temptress Athe at bay. 14He would go on faux treasure hunts, and sword fight palm trees, and bark orders to a pirate crew that not be there. 15And yay, the island did become a most holy site, and rumors started to circulate o' an island that stretched noodles into the sky at sunset. 16Sitting out on the deck of his luxurious new home, a tray full of raviolis at his side, the boy chef relaxed and contently waited for the day he'd hear the reverberating hum of the starcruiser's engine once more...